Labelled by scholar Ana Paula Coutinho as one of the most gifted writers of the new Maghrebian literary movement, poet and translator Dr. Samira Negrouche sails across Algerian French, Tamazight, and Algerian Arabic languages. She is part of a group of Algerian writers collectively known as The October Generation, and her poetic vision (as sketched by one of her Spanish translators, the Argentine-born French author Carlos Alvarado-Larroucau) is in the same league as Stéphane Mallarmé and Alejandra Pizarnik. Resembling the Mediterranean Sea plainly visible from her Algiers apartment, her artistry and activism are fluid and expansive—crusading for the spirited interchange of literary and cultural thought across languages, artistic mediums, landscapes, and aesthetic style. ‘More literally than many poets, Negrouche has had her fingers on the pulse of Algiers’, Jill Jarvis summarises in Decolonizing Memory: Algeria & the Politics of Testimony (2021).
In this interview, I spoke with Dr. Negrouche on her body of work as a poet and translator; the current Algerian poetry and literary translation scene in the Francophone, Arabophone, and beyond; and the milieu that informs her philosophy and practise as a writer and cultural worker.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): You translate Algerian writers working in Arabic and Tamazight into French, and in turn, your works have been recast into several European languages. I’m interested in the ethnolinguistic milieu you come (and write) from—and write against.
Samira Negrouche (SN): I was born in Algiers, a city that has always been multilingual. Growing up in this city, I have been surrounded by these three languages that I like to call my mother tongues (although there is a traumatic history behind it). I am lucky to be part of a Berber-speaking family that has kept our ancestral language, and it is a language I keep using every day. There is Kabyle, the local daily language we use in my family, and also is the standard Tamazight, used and taught by a much larger group.
As a citizen of Algiers, I use our common daily Arabic that is often mixed with words from other languages—mainly Berber and French. This language has its own music and images. It has a lot in common with languages used in other parts of Algeria, but retains certain specificities. Finally, the Arabic we use in newspapers and universities is more standard.
French is still the main language for scientific studies in local universities, and it is also used in many other fields. It is a vivid language, especially in urban spaces. Additionally, English is starting to gain more attention among the youngest generations.
I grew up in a country where knowing the main three languages—with their oral and more formal branches—was natural. Of course, an individual’s level of any language would depend on one’s higher education. But this higher education didn’t depend on being part of an upper class, as it does in countries where education is very expensive; in Algeria, we don’t have private universities so we can say most of us who graduated from Algerian universities went through the public system, as I did.
I write from all these realities and for everyone who finds something in my writing, but I try to never write against it. I don’t have any energy to waste on hate or anger. I mean, I am trying to find my own way to protest and to add my contribution and my vision to our damaged world. I prefer to put everything I have in sharing the way I see and understand things.
AMMD: Being domicile in multilingualism, what do you consider when deciding to write in or translate into one specific language? And working across Tamazight, Arabic, and French as a poet and translator, could you tell us the language-specific creative processes you engage in?
SN: I didn’t decide to write in French—it just happened. It’s the language that I deeply felt was the right one for me to translate myself into literature. I can sometimes use words from one language or another, but French is my only language for writing. I sometimes write in English or a few lines in another language when I need to, but that’s different and occasional. As I already said, these languages are natural to me, and there is no conflict in my mind between them; it’s just that some of us hear the music of literature in one language and others in another. It is an intimate and very fascinating process. There are many ways to be multilingual. We have excellent writers in these three languages and a very serious lineage of Francophone Algerian writers such as Mohammed Dib, Kateb Yacine, and Assia Djebar, just to name a few.
For many years, we didn’t even think of translating Algerian writers into the other languages we speak. In the early years of independence, most of our writers and readers were Francophone, and then a new generation of Algerian writers writing in Arabic slowly emerged, and the readership in Arabic started to grow—but most of them were still able to read both in French and in Arabic.
Regarding Tamazight, literary production is very recent. Most of the publishing houses publishing literature in Tamazight were founded less than two decades ago, but it is also a vivid and very old oral tradition, so there is no doubt that it will bring important additions in the future. Usually, most of those who speak or write in a Berber language also know Arabic and French.
With that being said, translating Algerian literature in the last twenty years has become increasingly important in relation to larger institutional events. In my own case, I started translating other poets in the late nineties, when I started organising local or international literary events. It was important to me back then to include Algerian authors—regardless of whichever linguistic background they came from—and to translate their work so it could be available for other guests. That was the start, and the magic of life and literature has since brought me to other shores.
AMMD: Among your latest poetry collections are De l’amour des étranges cheavaux (published by Mémoire d’encrier), your translation of Nathalie Handal’s Love and Strange Horses; and very recently, Solio (published by Seagull Books), Nancy Naomi Carlson’s English translation of your poetry. Can you speak about these books, as well as being both a translator and a translated writer?
SN: It is a very common story. I am a lover of languages and of literature, and both are infinite bridges to the world of the other. What I love about Nathalie’s work is all the languages and layers it carries; you always sense she is in-between worlds. Although written in English, her language is multiple. She has her own way of being multilingual. You can feel that her soul carries a crossroad of experiences, and she offers us all of it with a sense of dignity and humility, always with love and a touch of sensuality, which is an impulse for life.
Being able to render someone’s poetry in the language I know best gives me a lot of happiness. Being translated is another kind of happiness. Poetry is written for the close and the faraway; how many poems brought from the other end of the world have changed our lives? So, if a line I wrote and that Nancy translated can mean something to any person anywhere in the world, I get the feeling that we’ve done something special together. Writing and translating are both collective achievements.
AMMD: You’ve had publishers based in France: A.P. l’étoile in Toulouse, Color Gang in Saint-Génis-des-Fontaines, Mazette in Plaisir, Fidel Anthelme X in Marseille, and Chévre-feuille étoilée in Montpellier. How was the reception of your works in the Francophone world beyond Algeria, such as in France or other French postcolonies in Africa? I understand that you consider French a ‘site of reclamation,’ as your generation’s language of resistance—and you’ve broached this in your prose poem ‘Qui parle’ (translated by Marilyn Hacker as ‘Who is speaking’):
Tell me—Who are you? When you speak in someone else’s language? Who are you when you seem to be waiting endlessly for the other, an other who resembles you, to authorise your existence? Only silence can answer.
SN: For over a decade, I mainly published my books in Algiers, with the exceptions of two collections and one art book. All these things happen by accident: you give a reading or you are invited to a festival, then you meet a publisher who is interested in your work, and sometimes that results in a book being put out.
The publishing situation in Algeria is quite complex. We have seen the number of presses rising in the last two decades, but their impact is very limited. Our books aren’t distributed outside the country and the distribution inside is very complicated, even in larger cities. With publishing some of my books in France or in other countries, I could see the difference. They are much easier to find for people who are interested in my work, especially for Francophone readers living abroad. I do my best to make books available for people inside and outside the country.
Recently, I had a collection of selected poems from 2001 to 2021 gathered in the volume J’habite en mouvement, which was published by Éditions Barzakh—the press that published my first poetry collection in Algiers in 2001. I am lucky to have publishers who support my work in my country, in Francophone countries, and abroad. The most important thing is to find a way for books to get to their readers.
AMMD: Is that centre-periphery tension between Metropolitan French and Algerian French a mirror to the prestige that Modern Standard Arabic holds over Algerian Arabic and other Arabic varieties? And in what ways is that reflected in Arabophone writing and publishing?
SN: You could say that the French language used in France and in Algeria are the same, at least in academic life or in professional spheres, but of course writers have their own language. You may find more French writers working on ‘destroying’ the language or using urban languages than Algerian writers. In most of Algerian Francophone literature, the themes, landscapes, and sometimes words of a local language can show specificities, but the distance between the language used and the standard French isn’t that far. Our place in this linguistic sphere has been gained, it wasn’t offered, and it has been a matter of generations. For several generations, we worked on having a voice of our own and to say who we are—and we continue to do so. There is still a lot to say about our layers of silences. We are probably also starting another phase with language, in which we will create a new literature with our specific multilingual backgrounds, but that will be more visible in the future.
In Arabic literature, there are examples in countries like Egypt, Palestine, and Morocco of literature written in local languages, but it’s still very experimental. I sense an interest in the younger generation of Algerian writers too. Most writers use an academic language even when they bring in other words here and there. Local languages in Arabic and in Berber are, of course, used for oral forms such as songs and drama, and that can be found in different musical traditions throughout the country.
AMMD: Canonically, you have been catalogued with the Fifth Diwan generation —Laila Neihoum and Fatima Mahmoud of Libya, Samina Ouederni of Tunisia, Aïcha Mint Chighaly of Mauritania, Ouidad Benmoussa of Morrocco, and Assia Djebar, also of Algeria, to name a few—or with other Francophone African writers like Tchak Sami of Togo and Armel Fernand Mbida Ebo’o of Cameroon. In an anthology of erotic poetry by Arab women, your love poems were sketched as ‘assured [and] sensitive’, side by side with Naomi Shihab Nye and Nathalie Handal. What do you think about these labels of canon-making that come with the critical attention towards your poetry?
SN: I don’t think much of labels. I have a lot of respect for the writers you named, and there is a sense of being part of a big family for one reason or another. I am very open to anything that brings readers closer to books, and even if I sometimes feel that a particular connection being drawn is wrong, I can understand that it means something for some people at a certain point.
Anthologies and collectives are a way to open a window, to create dialogues. We are part of a country, a region, a language, sometimes of a generation or an aesthetic, but as authors we also try to bring a singularity. There is a balance to be found there. We aim to bring something special and unique, and there is no contradiction in that.
AMMD: Speaking of Marilyn Hacker, in her collection Calligraphies (2023), she ponders, ‘So I’m / a student again, translate / three ways, begin forever’—and I think that’s a glimpse of her translation process. How was your experience working with her in the acclaimed, bilingual The Olive Trees’ Jazz and Other Poems (Pleaides Press, 2020)? Should we, your Anglophone readers, expect more collaborative projects in the pipeline?
SN: Marilyn Hacker is an exquisite poet and she is a very special translator, very generous with her time and very open to meeting, learning, and discovering new poets coming from new horizons. We met twelve years ago when she translated a selection of my work for Banipal, and I feel very grateful to her for bringing out my first English-language book.
Our book carries memories. We were proofreading the book in 2019 during the huge protests in Algeria, then again in Lebanon, where she was. We spoke of poetry, of life and politics. I don’t know if there will be more projects in the future, but I am always curious to read her work and she has a special place in my heart.
AMMD: You’re an artist yourself who delves into theatre, film, mixed-media, and photography collaborations, with individuals such as musician Angélique Ionatos, artist Marc Giai-Miniet, theorist Bruno Helstoffer, and choreographer Fatou Cissé. For BOMB magazine, for instance, Anna Moschovakis wrote ‘Flat White’, a piece made from ‘often-corrupt’ versions of your poetry. Would you consider the adaptation from one art form to another an act of translation? How so?
SN: Collaborations are important to me, and I learn a lot from them. Every collaboration is a new experience that helps me to question my writing practise in a new way. I also like performing poetry in an interdisciplinary context, with music, choreography, or visual art, for example. In the first steps of a collaboration, the word translation often appears. How do we co-create something we want to perform together, or even a mixed object that can be both textual and visual? You start by wondering how one can ‘translate’ the language of the other artist into your media, but then you know it’s not exactly what you are looking for. You want to create a dialogue, to create something that is impacted by the practise, the technique, the vibe, the questioning of the other artist. I would say it’s a back-and-forth process and, sometimes, something comes out of it.
The experience with Anna is very nourishing. It is an ongoing dialogue, we’ve continued writing after ‘Flat White’. For example, I translated and published a new piece of ours called ‘Thanksgiving’, as well as an updated version of ‘Flat White’ called ‘Flat white Revisited’ in my book, Stations. I think we both want to continue the dialogue, but we don’t give it a deadline. In terms of ‘Flat White’ and how it appeared, Anna had started writing fragments in dialogue with a sequence of mine called ‘Café sans sucre’ or ‘Coffee without sugar’. The fragments were sometimes about the process of translating, or contained certain questions and introspections on our respective backgrounds. By doing that, she found a new way to highlight the issues and questions we don’t usually ask or address. It is a vivid and evolutive way of translating and being together. It is a matter of building deep trust.
AMMD: When we speak of the scholarship surrounding Algerian literature, who are the Global Majority, Arab, North African, and Algerian scholars, writers, artists, and thinkers whose works have shaped your philosophy, creative-critical writings, and ethos? In what ways have they been influential to you?
SN: I have been influenced by many local, regional, and international thinkers, writers, and artists. To name a few: Jean Amrouche, Assia Djebar, Etel Adnan, Mohammed Khadda, Jean Sénac, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, James Baldwin, Octavio Paz, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ingeborg Bachmann, Hannah Arendt, Si Mohand ou-Mhand, Anselm Kieffer, Rothko, Rabindranath Tagore. . .
They and many others nurture my thinking, my aesthetic, my soul. They push my questionings forward and help me find a way into my own singularity.
AMMD: Francophone publishing has flourished all these years with Algerian publishers like Éditions Barzakh, Lettres Char-nues, Éditions Ilkhtilef, and Éditions du Tell. What about translators? Are there Algerian translators whose works from and into Algerian languages you think the Anglosphere should not miss out on?
SN: Francophone publishing is quite old in Algeria. Soon after the country’s independence, we had publishing houses ruled by the state. During the Black Decade, in the nineties, most of their activity stopped. It slowly returned in the early 2000s with the creation of new private presses, flourishing in French and Arabic, and most recently in Tamazight.
I don’t think there are translators specifically dedicated to translating Algerian literature into English. There are examples here and there, but I don’t think there is that much Algerian literature that has been translated, even when you think of the classics. Maybe Assia Djebar is the one whose books have been translated into English the most, or Mohammed Dib. I can also mention Mohamed Sari who translates from French into Arabic—he’s done a lot of work for the last twenty years.
AMMD: If you were to teach a course on contemporary Algerian Poetry, what collections, anthologies, and poems would you wish to include as key texts? At the risk of handing a syllabus on a silver platter at the expense of your academic/creative labour, can you name some poets that you would be inclined to incorporate into this imaginary syllabus?
SN: I would have to first give a long introduction on history and languages, and then I would open a few windows to share the diversity of this literature. I would focus on two or three figures from different generations—let’s say Jean Amrouche, Anna Gréki, and Tahar Djaout. If we have more time, I would dig into our oral heritage and hope that it will stir up curiosity and encourage more independent explorations.
If I had to pick few collections, I would say L’étoile secrète by Jean Amrouche, Algérie Capitale Alger by Anna Gréki, La nuit du dedans by Djamal Amrani, and Solstice barbelé by Tahar Djaout. Of course, the collected works of Jean Sénac and l’oeuvre en fragments of Kateb Yacine.
Interviewee photo by Lili N.
Samira Negrouche, MD, divides her time between the Algerian capital of Algiers and her hometown, the Kabylie village of Taourirt. In the Anglophone world, she has been translated by Marilyn Hacker (The Olive Trees Jazz and Other Poems, Pleiades Press, 2020) and Nancy Naomi Carlson (Solio, Seagull Books, 2024). She is the author of several French poetry collections: Faiblesse n’est pas de dire (Éditions Barzakh, 2001), L’opéra cosmique (Éditions Ikhlitef, 2003), À l’ombre de Grenade (Éditions A.P. l’étoile, 2003), Iridienne (Éditions Color Gang, 2005), À chacun sa révolution (La stanza del poeta, 2006); Le jazz des oliviers (Éditions du Tell, 2010); Six arbres de fortune autour de ma baignoire (Éditions Mazette, 2017); Quai 2I1, partition à trois axes (Éditions Mazette, 2019); Traces (Fidel Anthelme X, 2021); J’habite en mouvement (Éditions Barzakh, 2023) and Stations (Éditions Chèvre-feuille étoilée, 2023). She has translated Algerian writers who write in Arabic and Tamazight into French, such as Inaâm Bioud and Yasmina Salah, and international authors such as Mazen Maarouf from Arabic and Nathalie Handal from English. She has also edited Quand l’amandier refleurira (Éditions de l’Amandier, 2012), an anthology of works by contemporary Francophone Algerian poets; and Triangle (Éditions Alpha, 2008), an anthology of international poets translated into Tamazight, Arabic, and French.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas (they/them), Asymptote’s editor-at-large for the Philippines, is the author of M of the Southern Downpours (Australia: Downingfield Press, 2024), In the Name of the Body: Lyric Essays (Canada: Wrong Publishing, 2023), and Towards a Theory on City Boys: Prose Poems (UK: Newcomer Press, 2021). Their works—published from South Africa to Japan, France to Singapore, and translated into Chinese and Swedish—have appeared in BBC Radio 4, World Literature Today, Sant Jordi Festival of Books, The White Review, and the anthologies Infinite Constellations (University of Alabama Press) and He, She, They, Us: Queer Poems (Pan Macmillan UK). Formerly with Creative Nonfiction magazine, they’ve been nominated for The Best Literary Translations and twice to the Pushcart Prize for their lyric essays. Find more at https://linktr.ee/samdapanas.
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